Tag: Afghanistan suicide attack

File: An Afghan woman weeps for her relatives following a suicide bombing attack. AFP photo

A suicide attack on a foreign military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Monday killed at least 11 children who were nearby, officials said.

Sixteen other people were wounded, including foreign and Afghan security force members, when a bomb-laden car exploded in the southern province of Kandahar, provincial police spokesman Qasim Afghan told AFP.

Kandahar governor spokesman Said Aziz Ahmad Azizi confirmed the casualty toll. He said five Romanian soldiers and two Afghan police officers were among the injured.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan said eight Romanian soldiers were wounded in the attack. Afghan civilians, including children, and security forces were also among the casualties, it added.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with those wounded, and with the innocent Afghans whose lives were needlessly taken from them by the enemies of Afghanistan,” said General John Nicholson, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Romanian soldiers are tasked with providing security at Kandahar airport, which is used by foreign forces.

The attack came hours after two suicide blasts in the Afghan capital Kabul killed at least 25 people including Agence France-Presse chief photographer for Afghanistan Shah Marai.

Punch Games

More than 40 people were killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up in two separate mosque attacks in Afghanistan on Friday, officials said, in the latest violence to rock the country.

In the first attack, on a Shiite mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul, at least 32 people including women and children were killed and 41 others wounded when a lone suicide bomber blew himself up as worshippers gathered for evening prayer.

Police initially said a gunman entered the Imam Zaman mosque in a heavily Shiite neighbourhood in the west of the city and opened fire on worshippers.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bloody attack but recent assaults on Shiite mosques in Afghanistan have been carried out by Islamic State militants, who belong to the rival Sunni branch of Islam.

In the second assault, a suicide bomber detonated himself in a Sunni mosque in the impoverished and remote central province of Ghor, killing at least 10 people.

A senior local police commander, who is believed to have been the target of the attack in Dolaina district, was among the dead, district governor Mohsen Danishyar told AFP.

Danishyar put the death toll as high as 30 but Ghor provincial governor Naser Khazeh told AFP that he could only confirm 10 deaths.

Interior ministry spokesman Najib Danish said at least 15 people were killed and five were injured in the Ghor assault.

The last attack on a Shiite mosque in Kabul happened on September 29 as Muslims prepared to commemorate Ashura, one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar.

Six people were killed when a suicide bomber posing as a shepherd blew himself up near Hussainia mosque, one of the biggest Shiite centres in the city, as worshippers gathered for Friday prayers.

An attack on another Shiite mosque in the city on August 25 killed 28 people and wounded around 50 others.

Four attackers who set off explosions and fired gunshots laid siege to the mosque in the north of the capital for four hours as dozens of men, women and children had gathered for Friday prayers.

In recent years, the Taliban and Islamic State jihadists have repeatedly targeted the minority Shiite community, who number around three million in overwhelmingly Sunni Afghanistan.

Punch Games

A Afghan security personnel keeps watch at the site of a suicide attack outside a bank near the US embassy in Kabul. Photo: AFP

An ongoing suicide and gun attack on a police training centre in a southeast Afghan city has killed at least 15 people and wounded over 40, a hospital official said Tuesday.

The victims of the attack, which was claimed by the Taliban in a tweet, include “women, students and police”, Hedayatullah Hamidi, public health director in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, told AFP.

“At first a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives near the training centre, making way for a number of attackers to start their assault,” the interior ministry said in a statement.

A battle between the attackers, armed with guns and suicide vests, and security forces was under way inside the centre which is located near the Paktia police headquarters, it said.

A local official said two car bombs went off near the compound that also houses the provincial headquarters of the national police, border police and Afghan National Army.

“A group of gunmen have entered the compound and fighting is ongoing,” Allah Mir Bahram, a member of the Paktia provincial council, told AFP.

Photos posted on Twitter purportedly show two large plumes of smoke rising above the city, suggesting two bombs were detonated in the assault.

The attack came hours after a US drone strike in Pakistan’s Kurram tribal district, part of which borders Paktia, killed at least 26 Haqqani militants, officials have said.

Local officials told AFP that drones were still flying above Kurram after the attack, the deadliest targeting militants in the Pakistani tribal region this year.

In Kurram last week the Pakistani military rescued a US-Canadian family who had been abducted by militants in Afghanistan in 2012. US President Donald Trump has said they were being held by the Haqqani network.

– Ghazni attack –

The extremist group has been blamed for carrying out spectacular attacks across Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 and is known for its frequent use of suicide bombers.

It was blamed for the truck bomb deep in the heart of the Afghan capital Kabul in May that killed around 150 people.

The Haqqanis have also been accused of assassinating top Afghan officials and holding kidnapped Westerners for ransom.

These include Canadian Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman, and their three children — all born in captivity — who were rescued last week, as well as US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in 2014.

Militants also targeted security forces in Ghazni on Tuesday, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) from Gardez, officials there said.

That attack, also ongoing, followed the same pattern, with “terrorists” detonating an explosives-laden Humvee vehicle near a police headquarters and attackers storming the building, Haref Noori, the Ghazni governor’s spokesman, told AFP.

Initial reports show seven police and around 20 civilians have been wounded, Noori said.

The latest attacks come as four-way talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China reportedly are being held in Oman with the aim of ending the Taliban’s 16-year insurgency.